She couldn't concentrate on anything. Every time she attempted to read from a textbook, she found herself going over and over the same paragraph time and again, absorbing nothing of the words on the page. Writing was equally futile. No homework written while she was in this state of mind would be worthy of turning in. How could she write coherently while anxiety, strong as acid, burned a hole in the pit of her stomach? It was no use.

Thus passed her morning, and when Madam Pince glanced up at the library clock and then proceeded to ring the little silver bell on her desk, denoting the fact that lunchtime had arrived, Hermione rose and packed her things away, heading down to the Great Hall more out of the hope of finding Harry and Draco there than because she was the least bit hungry.

Harry and Draco were not there.

Ron, however, was. He had returned from his search equally empty-handed... though, unlike Hermione, who was listlessly pushing the food around on her plate in between bouts of wringing her hands and glancing repeatedly at the door, Ron's appetite seemed unaffected by the absence of his best friend from the table. Oh, he was worried, all right- Hermione could see it in his eyes- but that didn't stop him from chowing right down. Then again, Ron hadn't encountered Mister Doom-and-Gloom My-father's-out-to-kill-us-all Malfoy that morning, either. That would put a damper on anyone's appetite, she reflected.

It was about forty minutes into the hour-long lunch period that the assembled students in the Great Hall were silenced in their mealtime chatter by a resounding thud in the entrance hall; the school's front doors, Hermione realized, sounding as though they'd been thrown violently open from outside. She was already on her feet when the doors from the entrance hall into the Great Hall flew open as well- were kicked open, to be precise, and was running, full tilt, in the next second, as she recognized Harry and Draco standing on the threshold.

Her heart leapt when she saw that Harry appeared all right- then, just as abruptly, plummeted as it became apparent that Draco was not.

But Harry's fine! Thank God, Harry's fine. Why the hell should I care about Malfoy?!?

She did, though. She could feel her concern mounting as she approached and saw that Harry had Draco's arm slung over his shoulder, and was supporting the Slytherin, holding him upright, with both their broomsticks clasped in his other hand- the reason he had resorted, she supposed, to kicking the door. Both boys, moreover, looked equally disgruntled by their close physical proximity to one another; it would have been almost humorous, had the circumstances been different. Having spent the entire morning worried to distraction, however, Hermione was in no mood to find humor in this situation.

"Harry!" she cried, throwing her arms around his neck. "Where have you been, I've been out of my mind!" She buried her face in his chest for just a fraction of a moment, then pulled away, her attention now on Draco, worry clouding her features. "And what happened-"

Draco seemed to take this as his cue to wrench himself away from Harry, falling back against the doorframe. "Nothing's happened," he snapped, "I'm fine," and immediately commenced sliding floorward until he was sitting propped in the doorway, glaring up at Harry who sighed and said tiredly, "Malfoy flew into a tree. He's got a bad sprain."

If Draco had been glaring before, the look he shot Harry now was absolute venom. "Only because Potter here decided to play airborne hide-and-seek in the bloody Forbidden Forest," he snarled.

Harry shrugged. "I told you I needed some time to myself, Malfoy."

"And I bloody well told you that wasn't an option today."

Hermione could see Harry beginning to get exasperated. "Well, you got your way, Malfoy! I'm here, aren't I? Your goal was to bring me back, and I'm back! So what are you on about?!?"

"My ankle!" Draco shouted, disregarding the fact that a mere moment ago he had insisted there was nothing wrong with him. "That's what I'm on about, Potter!"

"Stop!" Hermione cried. "Just stop it, both of you!" She glanced toward the staff table, but there was no help to be found there. As usual, the professors had all finished their meals within the first half-hour of the lunch period, and had gone off to prepare their classrooms and lesson plans for the afternoon. There were no adults present to render Draco aid. He clearly wouldn't be able to make it up to the hospital wing on his own without doing himself further harm, and he certainly did not appear to be receptive to offers of support from anyone else present. He looked positively baleful sitting there, now glowering around impartially at one and all of the dining students who were craning their necks, the better to stare right back at him.

Abruptly, Hermione had an idea.

"Neville!" she called, and waved her hand, beckoning the shy boy over.

He came cautiously, and, Hermione thought, with good reason, as the moment she's spoken his name Draco's attention had snapped onto him, and he was now, as he approached, the sole recipient of the Head Boy's most poisonous glare yet. Still, on he came. For all the shyness and introversion that made up his fundamental nature, Neville also possessed a quiet sort of determination; a quality that had been growing in him steadily during the latter half of his Hogwarts years. When a friend called, Neville would respond- come hell or high water, or even severely pissed off Slytherin Head Boys.

"Hermione?" Neville inquired when he was standing beside her.

"You're taking Advanced Medical Magic this term, aren't you?" she asked, regretting, for the umpteenth time, that she herself had been unable to enroll in it- so many classes available, so little time. "Can you heal a sprained ankle?"

After years of struggling in school, Neville had finally found himself a niche. Well, two niches, to be exact- Herbology, and Medicine. In the wizarding world, the two really went hand-in-hand, and Neville, it transpired, excelled at both.

"I can," he replied now, slowly, "but only with Malfoy's permission."

It was a well-known and respected law in the wizarding world that an adult witch or wizard- and Draco, now seventeen, qualified- had the absolute right, so long as she or he was conscious and thinking clearly, to choose whether to consent to, or deny, medical care.

The ball was now firmly in Draco's court.

He peered distrustfully up at Neville. It was clear that having to rely on anyone else for assistance galled him- and having to rely on Neville, of all people, whom he had used to tease unmercifully about his magical ineptitude, had to be especially humbling for him, Hermione thought.

To which half of her wanted to shout out, Good! Serves you right, Malfoy, to be sitting on the floor in pain and have to depend on Neville Longbottom to help you out of it! But this impulse was fleeting, because Hermione was, by nature, a compassionate person, who hated to see others in pain. And Draco was clearly in pain, though doing his damnest not to let on. She could tell, though, by the tightness in his jaw; his breath, hissing shallow through clenched teeth; the way he had one hand clamped protectively over the injured ankle. She could tell because if it were Harry who was injured, he would be reacting exactly the same way. Well, aside from the hostility that seemed to be radiating off Draco in waves. But his steadfast refusal to submit- or even admit- to the pain he was in was familiar; it was quite Harry-esque; she found it both frustrating and endearing all at once.

In the end, Draco accepted Neville's offer of help, and the situation was resolved a bare thirty seconds later. It was a simple thing, hardly worthy of all the drama that had preceded it. Draco was obliged to roll up his trouser leg; Neville went down on one knee beside him, laid the tip of his wand gently to the offending ankle, which, Hermione thought, with a sympathetic indrawn breath, was looking very puffy and painful indeed- spoke a short, yet complex, incantation, Draco's entire lower leg was briefly bathed in a pale golden light, and then it was over, Draco getting to his feet with his usual lithe grace restored, good as new.

And then he did something that even Hermione, optimistic by nature, had not expected; he extended his right hand to Neville. "Thanks, Longbottom," he said simply, as the two boys shook.

00000

Hermione followed him out of the Great Hall. After he took his broomstick back from Harry and left, she stayed just long enough to thank Neville herself, give Harry another brief, hard hug, and make him promise her not to wander any more that day. Then she was hurrying out into the entrance hall after Draco.

She caught him just as he turned off toward the Slytherin dungeons, walking more slowly than was usual for him, looking tired.

"Malfoy!"

He turned and waited, regarding her impassively as she approached.

"I just-" she faltered, suddenly wondering why on earth she had chased him down like this. "I um..." God, what had she been thinking? He was just standing there, looking bland and faintly amused, allowing her to stutter on and make an idiot of herself. And what else had she expected, really?

"I just wanted to thank you," she said finally, lamely, turning away even as she spoke. "I was so worried, you can't know what it meant to me... anyway, thanks."

She had started to walk away again when his voice brought her up short.

"Granger."

She turned back toward him, slowly, warily, not knowing what to expect. She could hardly read Malfoy at all anymore. It almost made her long for the old days when they had flat-out loathed each other; at least then she'd known very clearly where they'd stood.

Almost.

But not quite.

No, she wouldn't go back to that other Draco, the one who had used to look at her as if she'd been something sticky he had stepped in, in his crisp new loafers. Anything was preferable to that- even a Draco who was a perfect mystery to her. As this one was. He was looking hard at her, his slate-colored eyes unfathomable.

She swallowed. "Yes?"

"Remember what I said before, and watch yourself. All right?"

There it was again, that sense that an outsider observing this scene would inevitably come to the conclusion that this silver-haired boy, with his distant, thousand-yard stare, was really worried about the wellbeing of this pale, slim girl, who moved through the school in a cloud of dark, curly hair- and through life in a sort of academic haze.

Which was just bizarre, considering.

Considering who he was. Considering who she was. And considering the long and unlovely history of their acquaintanceship.

But what was stranger still- and profoundly unsettling- was that she found herself, against all reason, wishing that this could have been the case... even as her deeply ingrained sense of logic and reason assured her that it could not. There had to be another explanation. Draco Malfoy could not possibly care for her.

Could he?

00000

It was Halloween afternoon.

Over the past week, the newspapers had been full of rumors and speculations as to the whereabouts of the Azkaban escapees- but there were no solid leads, no sightings, and certainly no captures. All seven criminals, Lucius Malfoy included, were still very much on the loose. This meant little to the younger students at the school, however, and even amongst the older ones, the outcry which had originally greeted the news had died down almost entirely. After all, an Azkaban prison-break, though disturbing, really had very little bearing on their actual lives... well, all except for Draco.

In any event, on this day in particular, the student body of Hogwarts- and most especially the seventh-year students- had a far more pressing matter on their minds; a matter that could be summed up in three words. The Haunted House.

The first through sixth-year students were in an agony of anticipation- the seventh-years had been advertising vigorously over the past two weeks- and as for the seventh-year students themselves... well, they had to set up.

Lunch had been served in the Great Hall, immediately after which the seventh-years had gone to work on the enormous room. It had been announced that dinner would be served in the four House common rooms, and that after dinner all students who would like to experience the Haunted House should proceed to the entrance hall, in an orderly fashion, please.

At the moment it was nearly three-thirty, and preparations were reaching a fevered pitch. There was only an hour and a half left before the seventh-years would need to report back to their own respective common rooms for a rushed half-hour dinner followed by the hour allotted them for getting dressed in their costumes- they needed to be back downstairs by six-thirty to make any final preparations and take their places for the grand opening at seven-o-clock.

Everyone was working fast and furiously, and so it was really only a matter of time before an accident had to happen. Hermione saw the whole thing- and it wasn't because she'd been stealing glances at Draco Malfoy roughly every thirty seconds all day, damnit, it wasn't- she just so happened to be looking that way.

It was purely coincidental.

Right.

In any event, what happened was this;

Draco was staring straight upwards, intent on changing the enchantments on the Great Hall's ceiling. Just for this night, it would not reflect the weather outdoors, but rather alternate between an eerie shifting fog with the full moon peeking through periodically, and the occasional, sudden full black-out, which would douse the cavernous room in a darkness so complete that it was sure to elicit shrieks and squeals of delicious fright.

It was a concentration-intensive task, and so he failed to pay any attention to the bucket full of glitter that was being levitated over his head by Hannah Abbot, who was carrying four more pails of the sparkly stuff, two in each hand, toward the entrance hall, and was using wandless magic to float the fifth along, relying on a spell that required nothing more than that its caster maintained constant eye contact with the object she was levitating. Unfortunately, just as the bucket was passing over Draco's head, Hannah's eye contact with it was broken as she walked straight into Ernie MacMillan, who was walking backwards as he lugged a giant rubber spider in the opposite direction.

Hannah stumbled with a cry, but managed- though barely- to save the four pails she was carrying. The one she'd been floating, however, was a different story. It first tipped, then plummeted to the floor, narrowly missing Draco- its contents, however, spilled from it in a bright, shimmering wave, which proceeded to fall directly into Draco's upturned face.

Hermione's feet were hurrying her toward him even before she was consciously aware of moving at all. She reached him just as he clapped both hands over his face- approaching him from behind as he gave a choked "Argh!" and began coughing and spitting out the glitter that had gotten into his mouth.

"Malfoy?"

He spat again, then wiped the back of one hand hard across his lips. "Granger?" he asked, moving both hands, now, upward to cover his eyes- but he made no move to turn around.

"Malfoy!" She put her hands on his shoulders and forcibly turned him to face her. Glitter in Halloween colors- black and orange, purple and gold, glinted in his pale hair, and on his shoulders. His head was bowed and he was knuckling at his eyes- seeing him like that, he looked ten years younger than he was- young and helpless, like a child newly awakened, rubbing sleep away. She felt her heart give a funny little lurch in her chest.

There was nothing child-like, however, about the muffled stream of curses issuing from his mouth.

"Oh, for crying out loud- Malfoy! Last year I saw you fight like a holy terror, and now a little glitter puts you out of commission?"

More curses.

"I'm warning you, lay off the Hufflepuffs, or I'm not going to help you. It was an accident!"

"I bloody well know it was an accident! That doesn't stop it from hurting!" he whined.

"Well, quit rubbing it in farther!" She pressed down on his shoulders. "Sit!"

"Sit where?!"

All right, now he was being difficult deliberately.

"On the damn floor!" She increased the pressure she was exerting on his shoulders, and he finally capitulated, dropping to the flagstone floor to sit cross-legged, still with shoulders hunched and hands over his eyes, still with a liberal dusting of glitter sparkling all over his upper body.

Hermione sank to her knees behind him and, reaching forward around him, took his hands and pulled them away from his face, forcing them down by his sides. She then grasped his head gently by the temples and tipped it backward, until he was staring straight up at the ceiling- or would have been, if his eyes hadn't been screwed shut, his whole face scrunched up, glitter caught in his eyebrows and lying across the bridge of his nose.

"You're going to have to open your eyes, Malfoy," she said, striving to keep her voice as calm and soothing as her hands. "Open them and look at me, okay?"

He did so; they were watering, which made them look less like slate and more like quicksilver. "All right, now hold still," she breathed, bending close over him, long, curling tendrils of hair that had escaped the loose, hastily constructed knot at the nape of her neck falling forward on either side of her face, coming to rest on his shoulders as she began, with utmost care, to brush away the glitter that was caught in his lashes, irritating his eyes.

She took her time, getting all that she could by hand before placing the tip of her wand to each of his eyes in turn and using a gentler variation of 'scourgify' to remove the rest. "Blink several times and you should be all right," she told him.

He did, then smiled up at her- a genuine smile, which held both warmth and gratitude; it was the first expression of its kind that she had ever seen on his face, and it floored her. And then there were his eyes, still tear-bright- she was falling into them, losing herself; she should have been getting to her feet by now and on some distant, unimportant level, she knew this- but she couldn't tear herself away from those mercurial eyes.

And before she knew what she was doing, before she had a chance to impose any control upon herself whatsoever, she blurted out, "your eyes are-"

Then stopped abruptly, heart suddenly pounding. What in the name of heaven and earth was she doing? Awareness returned to her in a rush and she realized that she was kneeling on the floor of the Great Hall, with Draco Malfoy seated cross-legged in front of her- head tilted back and resting on the swell of her breasts- leaning over him so closely that she could smell peppermint humbugs on his breath, and about to wax eloquent about his eyes! And what was more, this was by no means a private location. In fact, she could see peripherally that a small crowd had gathered, attracted no doubt by his curses of a moment ago, now watching in fascination this bizarre scene between the Head Boy and Girl.

Color flooded her cheeks, and she started to pull back, but before she was able, Draco's right hand flashed up, quick as lightning- those Seeker reflexes of his coming into play beautifully- and caught her by the back of her neck, holding her firmly in place, bent close over him.

"My eyes are what, Granger?" he asked quietly, and as he spoke she saw that his eyes were, in fact, blazing- there was an intensity, a heat in them that she had never seen before, had never even imagined... they were usually so cold, so guarded; she had heard it said that the eyes were the window to the soul, but if Draco's eyes were windows then ninety percent of the time they were boarded up.

But now they were alight with emotion- which emotion she couldn't tell and wasn't sure she wanted to, anyway- the force of it was nearly frightening. And alight like that, she couldn't help thinking, they were absolutely-

"B-" beautiful. That's what she nearly said, God help her. They were absolutely beautiful. But she caught herself just in the nick of time and managed to convert this thought into a much more acceptable answer; "better. Your eyes are all better. And- and there's work to be done."

It was as if shutters slammed into place behind those amazing eyes. The light in them abruptly went out, and in the next second they were as distant and unfathomable as ever.

"Right you are, Granger," he said shortly, and was on his feet in an instant, unfolding from his position on the floor with an easy grace that amazed Hermione, leaving her kneeling there feeling suddenly bereft, as if she'd just lost something dear to her before she'd even fully realized that she'd had it in the first place.

She shook her head as if to clear it of such foolish notions, and then Draco was extending a hand down to her and she took it and he pulled her easily to her feet- but by then he was already looking past her, and as soon as she'd regained her balance he moved away from her, moved away without looking back, and she was left standing there, dazed, staring at Ron and Harry who were staring right back at her, agape.

What in the hell had just happened? And why couldn't she shake the feeling that it could have turned out another way- that she wished, suddenly and fervently, that it had turned out another way?

"I-" she stammered, and her eyes were drawn away from her two best friends, skimming the now dispelling crowd of students to rest on Lavender and Parvati, who were standing a short distance away and whispering furiously, eyes cutting back and forth between her and Draco nearly as rapidly as if they were watching a tennis match.

"I need to get some air," she blurted abruptly, to no one in particular, and then she was running, flat-out running- so much for preserving her dignity; it was now officially in shreds- out of the Great Hall, through the entryway, and right out of the castle, just as Harry had done several days before.